yup, a healthy a company need to cut/replace the bottom/under performing 5% if it's workforce every year to stay healthy... unions prevent this and are like a disease to the company
Posted on 05/07/2012 12:24:07 PM PDT by robowombat
Edited on 05/07/2012 1:00:52 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
JOLIET, Ill. (AP)
(Excerpt) Read more at manufacturing.net ...
In this thread I’m talking about the wages for workers who build heavy equipment. If this was your plant are you telling me you’d hire the $12.50 workers to build your million dollar equipment? Good luck with that?
I worked at Cat in Joliet back in ‘53. Swept floors mostly while learning how to use a CandC and all the other machines. Hones, lathes, radial drills, etc. Great times. Was greatful for the experience.
And I am not pro-union! I’m just standing for the ‘working guy’ who has seen his 20 years of loyal devotion to a company stripped away while the fat cats walk off laughing with their pockets full. Greed forcing slave wages on the desperate. Is that what you want in America?
Nonsense. If I pay employees $4 an hour I will have a $4 an hour product made by people worth only $4 an hour. If my competitor sells a similar product, and they pay their employees $6 an hour, they can be more selective. The employees will be forced to work harder and make a better quality product in order to keep their job. In effect, you get what you pay for. The consumer has the option in quality.
Further, eliminating the minimum wage removes false pricing platforms and causes products to be cheaper. While employees would be getting paid less, their money would actually go farther. It would also enable American businesses to better compete with slave labor countries, such as China, that still have to overcome shipping costs.
When Henry Ford first started he wanted to pay his workers enough so they could afford to buy a Model T. When you reward an employee based on his effort, they strive to do better to make more money (or they get fired and a more efficient/competent employee is hired); the effect is win-win. The employer gets a better product and more efficient employees; the employees receive better pay and incentives.
If an employer choses to pay his employees basic sustenance and "race to the bottom", he will quickly find himself out of business as no one wants his inferior product and no one is willing to work for him. The smart employees will look for better opportunities vice maintaining the status quo. There is no better motivation than necesity.
If you pay everyone the same no matter what, there is no reason to strive or work harder....minimum quota. If you make it near impossible to fire an employee because the union, you will get lackluster performance where the employee does the bare minimum; after all, it isn't worth the effort to fire him. Socialism has failed in every form each and every time it was tried. If you try to make everything "equal" and "fair," everyone will just wind up equally poor as business after business fails due to the ever rising cost of "benefits."
Case in point.......Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo. How is the "middle class" doing those cities? Aren't, or I should say "weren't" since the parasites killed most of the viable hosts, they solid union towns?
$13.00/hr
I can’t find any rebuttal from the company
Caterpillar wouldn't have any trouble making one of sufficient size. They specialize in super-sized equipment and the specs on crowbars shouldn't be all that complicated and probably can be made verrrry cheaply.
It's called "the free market." Let states be "right-to-work" and get rid of the minimum wage. Equilibrium will be reached. There is a reason America became one of the most profitable countries in the history of the world without conquest and looting. You have the right to success, and you have the right to failure; you are guaranteed neither....but should achieve either based on your own merit.
People have forgotten that reason and with it, their faith in what made this country great.......our current situation is the result. But at least we'll be equally poor.
In my view, when I’m standing on my hill looking out at all that was built, it’s not the $$$ in my bank account I’m proud of but rather what’s truly worthwhile. All the families I helped by providing decent paying jobs and in return they helped me build the most productive cog factory in the world. That to me is wealth.
I’m not advocating a minimum wage or unionization or anything like that; all of the toys you mention are irrelevant as Americans now struggle to keep a roof over their heads, buy groceries, and buy the gasoline so they can get to their jobs that let them do that. I’m not in a union, and turned down the opportunity to join one when I was in high school & college.
Argue it all you want; I have children, and think the price is worth paying. I’m tired of people saying they can’t afford them, and in the next breath whining about all of the foreigner being shipped in (as a direct consequence of their choices).
Whatever you want to say about wages, I know I have a mechanic that wants to fix things on my car (that aren’t pressing, but will have to be dealt with), a dentist that wants to fix things with my teeth (that aren’t pressing, but will have to be dealt with), a neighbor that wants to fix things on my house (that aren’t pressing, but will have to be dealt with), and all of them will do without (as will I) because our wage situation in this country is working out so well.
Barack Obama is a minion of Satan as far as I’m concerned, but people shouldn’t underestimate the desperation that led many well-intentioned Americans to vote for him. Taking the same approach will give us four more years of him and his Bolshevism.
You have the right to success, and you have the right to failure; you are guaranteed neither....but should achieve either based on your own merit.
“BRAVO.... BRAVO”
yup, a healthy a company need to cut/replace the bottom/under performing 5% if it's workforce every year to stay healthy... unions prevent this and are like a disease to the company
Skilled labor isn’t going to work for $13 per hour plus benefits. It has to get a whole lot worse before that happens. Unskilled labor is a bit different. Some of these factories haven’t figured out how to automate some processes and need “unskilled” labor to perform some crucial tasks.
I didn’t see where they want to cut the pay of the 20 year vets, just keeping the lower tier pay the same. I’m sure there is room in negotiations. I also see they want to shift pension money AWAY from the union to a 401K plan.
Unions are broke and corrupt and if I were an employee, I’d rather have a 401K that I can take with me rather than waiting to get a pension that might not be there.
Time to move the company to a RTW state, across the state line to Indiana comes to mind.
Caterpillar was essentially bribed by Gov. Quinn not to relocate two years ago with a bunch of tax breaks. Now the union is flexing its muscles. Time for Cat to abandon this accursed state an relocate to a right to work state. Screw the union thugs. Shutter the plant and move out bag and baggage.
It seems obvious the plant must be moved. Mexico, or overseas, maybe. Somewhere the Democrat union scum can't destroy the company.
Get a grip.
It's more about the bennies (health care) than the wages.
The employees, part of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, are asking for better wages and health care.
So, you support “minimum wage” laws?
workers are being driven out of the work force by lack of jobs, but also by lack of GOOD jobs....
I generally hate unions but a guy should be able to work 40 hrs and make a decent living...
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